1. Future Studies Techniques – Scenario Planning and Foresight
By T. Garrett

2. “This present moment used to be the unimaginable future”
Stewart Brand
The Clock of the Long Now
Scenario Planning

3. Before We Start Suspend disbelief for a moment….
Imagine that you part of the senior executive group at your organisation – you are meeting to consider the future viability of your organisation which has been affected negatively by austerity .
In walks Fortuna, the renowned and proven clairvoyant. She says:
You can ask me three questions about your future.
What would those three questions be?
Before We Start

4. Scenario Planning Overview What is Foresight?
The Scenario Planning Process
Implementing Scenario Planning in Organisations
Close
Scenario Planning

5. Scenario Planning - Overview
Scenario planning is a foresight methodology – it helps make sense of an uncertain future.
The focus is on making better decisions.
Scenario Planning - Overview

6. Scenario Planning – Why do it?
The world is more complex than that envisaged when many of our institutions were created, and those institutions are now creaking, facing significant new challenges and pressures.
It is tough to be a manager in a time of such uncertainty.
Decisions taken today will have effects years into the future, but in what sort of world?
Never mind the future, it is increasingly difficult to discern trends and realities, and to make well-informed decisions today!
Scenario Planning – Why do it?

7. Scenario Planning – Why do it?
The future is not pre-determined or predicable.
If it were, there would be no point in taking action today, because it would have no effect on the future.
Full information about the future is never available.
It makes sense to look for ways to understand the future to deal with uncertainty.
Scenario Planning – Why do it?

8. What is Foresight?

9. All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions are about the future.
We create our future by what we do or don’t do today; it makes sense to try and understand as best we can what that future might be like before we act.
Foresight is not prediction! It is about getting an idea about what plausible futures might look like.
We are good at learning from the past; we need to learn from the future as well – we need to develop a ‘history of the future’ as we do a ‘history of the past’.
What is Foresight?

10. Why think about the future?
All our knowledge is about the past, but all our decisions are about the future.
What we don’t know we don’t know
What we know we don’t know
What we know
Most of what we need to know to make good decisions today is outside our comprehension: we don’t even know it’s there.
Why think about the future?

11. Types of Futures Possible - “might” happen (future knowledge)
Plausible – “could” happen (current knowledge)
Probable - “likely to” happen (current trends)
Preferable - “want to” happen (value judgements)
Types of Futures

12. Types of Futures Possible Plausible Probable Preferable Time
Today
Possible
Plausible
Probable
Preferable
Scenario
“Wildcard”
Types of Futures

13. Time
Today
Plausible
Probable
(Trends)
(Deep Drivers)
Types of Futures

14. So, foresight, put simply, is an approach to thinking about the future which lets you:
free up your thinking beyond the here and now;
explore plausible futures (ie always more than one, because “the” future is not pre-determined); and
think about implications for decision making today.
Foresight is a way of thinking that enhances our understanding of our current – and plausible future – strategic operating environment(s).
What is Foresight?

15. An attribute, competence or process that attempts to broaden the boundaries of perception by:
assessing the implications of present actions, decisions etc.
detecting and avoiding problems before they occur (early warning indicators)
considering the present implications of possible future events (proactive strategy formulation)
envisioning aspects of desired futures (normative scenarios)
What is Foresight?

16. Foresight, Strategy and Planning
Three inter-dependent but quite different elements:
Strategic Thinking
exploration, intuitive, synthesising, creative, inductive, disruptive, incomplete/ambiguous info; generating options
Strategy Development
assessing options, examining choices, making decisions and/or setting a destination or direction
Strategic Planning
implementation, analytical, deductive, making it happen, getting things done, pragmatic, “can do”; actions
Foresight, Strategy and Planning

17. Foresight, Strategy and Planning
Foresight is a strategic thinking process, not a strategic planning process.
It’s about options not actions.
Asks the question: “what might we need to do?”
not the questions: “what will we do?” or “how will we do it?”
Foresight, Strategy and Planning

18. Foresight, Strategy and Planning
Inputs
Strategy
Outputs
Foresight
Expanded Perceptions
of Strategic Options
Strategy Development
Strategic Planning
“Foresight Work”
Strategic Intelligence Scanning
Copyright © 2000 Joseph Voros
Foresight, Strategy and Planning

19. Foresight, Strategy and Planning
Inputs
Strategy
Outputs
Analysis
Interpretation
“what might we need to do?”
“what will we do?”
“how will we do it?”
“what’s really happening?”
“what seems to be happening?”
things happening
Foresight
“what might happen?”
Prospection
Foresight, Strategy and Planning

20. Foresight, Strategy and Planning
Inputs
Strategy
Outputs
Analysis
Interpretation
Prospection
Foresight
Expanded Perceptions
of Strategic Options
Strategy Development
Strategic Planning
Scenarios
“Deep” Drivers of Change
(System Structure / Dynamics)
Trends, Issues, Themes
Strategic Intelligence Scanning,
Near-Future Context
Foresight, Strategy and Planning

21. The Future as a Strategic Landscape
The ‘self’ journeys across the chessboard to the mountain, which lies in the medium term future
The strategic objective:
• A compelling, relevant future
• BHAG—“Big Hairy Audacious Goal”
• A concrete, specific goal
• A challenge, but achievable
The purpose of the organization
• A “future-focused role image”
• Not completed or “used up”
Strategic identity:
• Current reality
• Self-knowledge
• Strengths and weaknesses
• Values
• Preferences and experience
‘The Chessboard’— Issues and challenges we are likely to face
‘The Star’—
Our enduring and guiding social role
‘The Mountain’—
What we hope to achieve
‘The Self’—
Our values and attributes as a strategic player
The strategic environment:
• Strategic implementation and tactics
• Threats and opportunities
• Actions of other strategic actors
• Driving forces
• Mapped and understood using scenarios
The Future as a Strategic Landscape

22. The Future as a Strategic Landscape
The “Strategic Landscape”
Adapted from H. Tibbs
Self
Mountain
Star
Chessboard
The Future as a Strategic Landscape

23. Strategic Landscape (Tibbs)
Self
Chessboard
Mountain
Star
Our capacities, skills, values & attributes as a strategic player
Issues & challenges we are likely to face
Major goal or objective we want to achieve
Enduring & guiding social role or purpose
Strategic Landscape (Tibbs)

24. Strategic Landscape (Tibbs)

25. Foresight in Organisations
Foresight is a normal capacity of the human mind.
Everyone thinks about the future every day, and plans ways to deal with the uncertainty inherent in that future.
BUT, that thinking is usually unconscious, and usually stays within the brain of each person.
The challenge is to take it from being an implicit, unconscious process taking place in a single mind to being an explicit conscious process taking place in many minds
In other words, from implicit & unconscious to explicit & conscious and from individual to collective.
In organisations, this requires explicit foresight processes be created to support existing strategic processes.
Foresight in Organisations

26. Implementing Foresight
Five levels to implement foresight:
Level 1: recognition of foresight as an innate human capacity – every individual has the capacity for foresight
Level 2: immersion in foresight concepts – using foresight concepts and ideas to generate a futures discourse
Level 3: using foresight methodologies – use of key methods to make foresight “real”
Level 4: creating organisational niches – permanent, purpose-built areas to focus foresight
Level 5: foresight at the social level – where long-term thinking becomes the norm.
Richard Slaughter
Implementing Foresight

27. Practical Strategic Foresight
Choose an appropriate method or two from each level.
Refine the “flow” of information leading from Inputs to Strategy.
Aim for a deep foresight process.
Always Ask: Are our proposed strategic actions ‘wise’ when considered from a ‘future’ perspective?
The Goal: to act with wisdom in the present — informed by a perspective from the future, not only the past.
Practical Strategic Foresight